Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 3 days 20 hours 52 minutes
Dvořák reviewed
In 1885, a 20-year old violinist named Franz Kneisel came to America to become concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. That same year he formed the Kneisel Quartet, the first professional string quar...
Late-night "Parsifal"
OK – raise your hand if you have ever stayed up ‘till midnight to attend the premiere showing of a new film . . . Extra points if you attended in costume as a Hogwarts student! Well, opera fans ar...
Antheil's "Joyous" Symphony
On New Year's Eve, 1948, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the American composer George Antheil. Now, in his youth, Antheil was somet...
A Lehar premiere in Vienna
On this date in 1905, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár conducted the first performance of his new operetta, "The Merry Widow." Lehar was sure it would be a success, but others did not shar...
Quartets by Debussy and Ravel
While hardly twins, the String Quartets of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are often linked in the minds of music lovers and record companies. Admired today for their grace and sheer beauty, back ...
Humperdinck for the Animal Channel?
On today's date in 1910, the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new opera by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, already famous for his opera "Hansel and Gretel." This new opera was also a fairy...
Airs and poems by Kernis and Chausson
In the hands of a great performer, the violin can sing with the personality and intensity of a great opera singer. Pyrotechnics may dazzle, but nothing moves an audience as much as when a great vio...
A $400 finale for Sibelius
On this day in 1926, Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony in the first performance of the last major orchestral work of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius—his symphonic tone poem "Tapiola." ...
Bach in Leipzig, Bernstein in Berlin
Today is a holiday for most people, but certainly not for church musicians. On this day in 1734 in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach supervised not one but two performances of the first part of his ne...
Safe passage for Rachmaninoff
OK, how’s this for a movie scene worthy of “Doctor Zhivago” ... It’s October 1917 and Lenin has overthrown the Tsarist government of Russia. A composer and virtuoso pianist can hear gunfire from h...